KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While an In-Corr-Tech Ltd re­port on the dead­ly Delta P in­ci­dent at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd claimed that it was safe to res­cue four LM­CS divers trapped in­side a pipeline, Off­shore Tech­nol­o­gy So­lu­tions Ltd (OT­SL) Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor An­to­nio Don­awa says there was no way to de­ter­mine if that was true.

Giv­ing ev­i­dence at the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria/LM­CS div­ing tragedy at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Don­awa said there was no way to de­ter­mine whether some­thing could have trig­gered an­oth­er Delta P in­ci­dent.

A Delta P in­ci­dent sucked LM­CS divers Christo­pher Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Yusuf Hen­ry and Rishi Na­gas­sar in­to the 30-inch Sealine 36. The divers were re­plac­ing a de­fec­tive por­tion of the pipe at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd’s Berth No 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

Boodram man­aged to crawl and swim back to the mouth of the pipe, where his LM­CS col­leagues Corey Craw­ford and Ronald Ra­moutar res­cued him.

The oth­er div­er died af­ter Paria called off at­tempts by LM­CS to res­cue the trapped divers.

Paria ar­gued that one of its con­cerns with send­ing res­cue divers in­to the pipe was that they were un­sure whether an­oth­er Delta P in­ci­dent could have oc­curred.

In a sup­ple­men­tary state­ment by In-Corr-Tech, pres­i­dent Zaid Khan stat­ed that be­fore Boodram emerged, the en­tire sys­tem be­came sta­ble and equalised at both ends. It al­lowed Boodram to go through the pipe with­out dis­rup­tions.

“This con­di­tion was the best op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tempt a res­cue,” Khan wrote.

Re­spond­ing to the re­port, Donowa said there was no way to gauge the pipeline to de­ter­mine whether the Delta P haz­ard no longer ex­ist­ed.

“There was some form of Delta P that ex­ist­ed if there was a video that you pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic of them (LM­CS divers) com­mu­ni­cat­ing in an en­vi­ron­ment with air. There is some form of Delta P. We do not know what that Delta P is,” Don­awa said.

CoE coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj rea­soned that there could al­ways be some form of Delta P but not nec­es­sar­i­ly se­vere enough to pre­vent peo­ple from re-en­ter­ing the pipe. Don­awa said there was no sci­en­tif­ic way of de­ter­min­ing this. Don­awa is not an en­gi­neer but has over 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence plan­ning risk as­sess­ments for div­ing op­er­a­tions.

In his wit­ness state­ment, Don­awa said Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um con­tact­ed OT­SL to pro­vide div­ing sup­port for the miss­ing divers.

He re­called speak­ing to Paria’s In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team and ask­ing whether the pipeline was dry, and some­one said it was. He re­mem­bered that he spoke to Her­itage a few days af­ter on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of do­ing a pen­e­tra­tion dive in­to the pipeline to search for sur­vivors

“I ad­vised of the safe­ty is­sues as there was no way to con­firm that the pipeline was to­tal­ly equalised and flood­ed and free of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Delta P event. I al­so dis­cour­aged the idea of drilling holes in­to the pipeline to search for the divers. This was Her­itage’s idea, and I al­so dis­cour­aged the idea of cut­ting the pipeline as drilling holes and cut­ting the pipeline would not con­firm that the pipeline was to­tal­ly equalised and flood­ed and free of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Delta P in­ci­dent.”

Don­awa’s state­ments an­gered Prakash Ra­mad­har, who rep­re­sents the fam­i­ly of Kur­ban, say­ing that the wit­ness came to jus­ti­fy the aw­ful­ness of that day. Ra­mad­har ac­cused him of de­fend­ing Paria as OT­SL is a reg­is­tered con­trac­tor with the State com­pa­ny.

In look­ing back at the in­ci­dent, Don­awa asked where was the LM­CS process would have al­lowed its divers to re­spond im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Boodram ex­it­ed the pipe.

He al­so said divers should not use scu­ba div­ing gear in a hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber but have a com­plete sur­face sup­ply hat and hose.

Chief of Operations at Eastern Emergency Response Services Ltd, Andy Johnson, gives evidence during the Commission of Enquiry yesterday.

KERWIN PIERRE

Andy John­son, Chief of Op­er­a­tions at East­ern Emer­gency Re­sponse, al­so gave ev­i­dence at the CoE yes­ter­day, shar­ing that his team did not have the ex­per­tise to con­duct an un­der­wa­ter res­cue. John­son said he ad­vised Paria that it need­ed divers.
John­son said that when Her­itage con­tact­ed him on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, he on­ly learned of four peo­ple trapped in the pipeline and got a di­a­gram via What­sApp.
At Berth No.6 with his team, Paria per­son­nel briefed them and showed footage of in­side the pipe that an HH­SL Safe­ty Sys­tems Ltd Re­mote­ly Op­er­a­tions Ve­hi­cle (ROV) pro­vid­ed.
As the team leader, it was John­son’s job to con­duct a risk as­sess­ment. Af­ter siz­ing up the task, he saw that the di­am­e­ter of the pipe was 30 inch­es which did not give the con­fined space spe­cial­ists much room to move around, mak­ing the res­cue a high risk. The ROV footage al­so showed that a pipe filled with wa­ter and some­thing was block­ing the path.
John­son then had a con­ver­sa­tion with his team, stat­ing that there was no way they could make an en­try in­to the pipe. He told the CoE that if Her­itage told him that four men got stuck in a pipe filled with wa­ter and hy­dro­car­bons from the start, he would have told them the East­ern could not car­ry out a res­cue at­tempt.